The theme for heritage week this year is Always in All Ways. What a wonderfully wide-open theme! While we at North Shore Heritage tend to focus on built heritage, we also recognize the connection of built heritage to both cultural and landscape heritage. In the blog today, I’m going to start with a photo that represents a piece of my personal heritage but after a little research on my part, I realized that this photo also tells a pretty interesting story related to the history of Grouse Mountain and North Shore tourism. Let’s start with the photo…
“Snap Shots” into the Life of the Goldsmith-Jones Family
When Tom from Urban Repurpose made this post to the store’s Facebook page, it immediately piqued my interest as I know this house! It’s a gorgeous Arts and Craft house that features prominently on the East Keith streetscape. I rushed in to see the photo and learned that it was part of a “Snap Shots” photo book that had been donated to his non-profit store. I quickly realized it documented the personal life of the family who lived in that home. Tom very kindly agreed to donate this important historical document to the North Vancouver Archives where it could remain in the public domain. After some detective work, I determined that it had once belonged to Gwen, the daughter of the original owner of 368 East Keith, William Goldsmith-Jones. The story that this book tells is amazing as it documents the life of the Goldsmith-Jones family from the time William arrived in Canada in 1908, to when his own children were adults, all in one book! Who needs an i-Cloud?! The “Snap Shots” book features photos of their various homes (all still standing!), their family members, treasured pets, close friends, their favourite vacation spots, their leisure activities and their places of employment. Alone, these photos tell a story of a pioneering North Vancouver family who were an integral part of society in the early 20th century. But then I tracked down two grandchildren of William Goldsmith-Jones, Geoffrey and Leslie, who really brought Gwen’s “Snap Shots” book to life!
Street Names in North Vancouver
The origin of the street names on the North Shore provides a fascinating history into the development of the North Shore as we know it today. This blog covers the people and places behind some of the names, starting with LONSDALE but also discussing Bridgman, Fell, Hamilton, Cloverley, Keith, Mahon, Moody, .Heywood, Pemberton, Whitchurch, Adderley and Shavington.
Doubly Spectacular Heritage Project
It all started with the January 7, 2020 North Shore News article “1908 Heritage Home Offered for Free”. The “Copper Cottage”, on the CNV Heritage Register, was slated for demolition but the developer had given it a last-minute reprieve, if North Shore Heritage could find someone to take it. Two years later, Tony Dean and Yvonne Perrault, have undertaken the most mammoth job of relocating, renovating, restoring not just the Copper Cottage but also the original 1920 house that sat at the back of their lot at 532 East 10th. The outcome is Doubly Spectacular, pun intended!!!
Sidewalk Talk
A Humble Home for a Mountaineering Icon
832 Cumberland – “A Sense of Home”
This blog documents the history of the Holdcroft family who lived at 832 Cumberland Crescent for 57 years and whose daughters attended the Crosby School for Girls, located at 745 Grand Boulevard in North Vancouver. Using Mary Holdcroft’s own typewritten document called “Memories of North Vancouver in the ‘20s and ‘30s” as a source, the blog includes many excerpts to provide an animated history of her family, their home, their neighbourhood and as the title implies, life in North Vancouver in the early 20th century. The blog is interspersed with a large number of photos of their house, their family and the Crosby School for Girls as well as some city and landscape photos taken by Mary’s father, John Barber Holdcroft, an amateur photographer who lived in North Vancouver during WW1, and again from 1924 until his death in 1975.